Shortly after the failed boycott all Jews were dismissed from the civil service.
They were not allowed to work in hospitals, schools, universities, post offices and government departments. They were not allowed to practice their professions, work in the media or in the entertainment industry.
Gradually more and more discriminatory laws were introduced against the Jews and in 1935 the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws that deprived Jews of their citizenship rights.
Ultimately four hundred laws and decrees were introduced against the Jews. They were not allowed to vote, to own property, houses or businesses. They were not allowed to go to the same schools, sit on the same benches, go to the beaches, travel on public transport, enter hotels, restaurants or theatres. They had no protection under the law, were left defenceless against physical assault and were excluded from the economic, social, cultural, political and public life of Germany. Very few people opposed the introduction of these laws.
Some of the many anti-Semitic laws that were passed between 1933 and 1939 were:
Jews were not allowed to be civil servants
Jewish doctors were not allowed to work in public hospitals.
Jews were not allowed to be judges.
Jews were not allowed to vote.
Jews were not allowed to be present at any political meeting.
Jews had no freedom of speech.
Jews were not allowed to be writers, publishers or journalists.
Jews were not allowed to teach in any university, secondary or elementary school.
Jewish musicians were not allowed to give concerts.
Jewish children were not allowed to go to the same schools as ‘Aryans’.
Jews were not allowed to use public transport.
Jews were not allowed to swim in public pools.
Jews were not allowed to go to hotels, restaurants, theatres or cinemas.
Jews were not allowed on the beaches.
Jews were not allowed to sit on the same benches as other Germans.
Persecution against Jewish people living in Germany became more and more violent and culminated in what became known as Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass).
This event took place in November 1938 when the Nazis organised a vicious attack on German Jews. They burnt down the synagogues, smashed and looted Jewish businesses and homes and arrested
30, 000 Jews and sent them to concentration camps.
Some Germans protested by resigning their membership in the Nazi Party. Some sent anonymous letters of protest to foreign embassies. Some bought Jewish families food and necessities to replace the items that had been destroyed. Most Germans, however, took no stand and ignored the events.
This really showed the true nature of Hitler and his regime. There are some rumours that were revealed after these events, that Hitler himself was half Jewish, and therefore he was very hypocritical.
By the beginning of 1939 Germany had already taken control over the Rhineland, the Saar and Austria. As German borders expanded the Jews living in these countries became victims of Nazi persecution.
This extremely antisemitic newspaper called Der Stürmer, meaning 'The Stormer', was first published 1923. It was edited by Julius Streicher, the notorious Jew baiter from Nuremberg.
The paper was full of scandal, lies and exaggeration. Most issues were illustrated with grotesque caricatures of Jews.
This is a special edition that calls for the death penalty on Jewish men who have German partners, describing them as race defilers.
The bottom of each issue declared: 'The Jews are our Misfortune'
2. Why did the Nazis treatment of the Jews change from 1939-45?
The invasion of Poland in September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war on Germany. In mid-1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. This acted as a catalyst for change in the treatment of the Jews. The conquest of Poland brought more than 3 million polish Jews under Nazi rule, as this was the country with the highest Jewish population.
Even though the Einsatzgruppen had killed 2.2 million Jews, the end to the problem was nowhere near in sight. Therefore a meeting was called in January 1942. Representatives from the ministry of justice, interior ministry, foreign office and the SS met along with Heydrich at a conference in Wansee, Berlin. It was there and then that the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" was decided. This is seen as key turning point in Nazi policy towards the Jews. By this point had tried out many different methods, none of them had worked. The Wansee conference marked the devising of a plan that would culminate in the mass extermination of the Jews.
In fact the polish city of Warsaw alone had a larger Jewish population than the whole German Reich. Naturally, the situation grew worse as German captured more land, they found more Jews and this meant that step by step more countries could be occupied in the same way, hence more Jews being exterminated. The Jews, which had been captured in Poland, were heavily terrorised with public humiliation, beatings and random killings. They were also driven into crowded ghettos in an area of Poland known as the general government. To mark them out, Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David.
The "Final Solution" was the murder of the Jews and was mainly carried out by a military group known as the SS and a security service known as the SD. The Gestapo was part of the SD. They arrested Jews and other victims, ran the concentration camps and organized the murder squads. The origin of the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people, remains uncertain. What is clear is that the genocide of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf Hitler. The "Final Solution" was implemented in stages.
After 1942, for definite, Hitler and the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews. This is were the plan for the ‘Final Solution’ came in.
“Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population.”
He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme. One of his main methods of "doing away" with these "undesirable" was through the use of concentration camps. In January 1941, in a meeting with his top officials the 'final solution' was decided. Jews were to be eliminated from the population. Auschwitz was the concentration camp that carried out Hitler's "final solution" in greater numbers than any other.
The concentration camps were terrible places to be. They had filthy
conditions and many of the Jews were forced to starve and die. Others were sent
to gas chambers that first had carbon monoxide and then were changed to hydrogen cyanide, a better and more efficient way to kill off the Jews Hitler thought.
The Nazis and SS, another Anti-Jew German group, referred to killing Jews and
exterminating their race and making Germany a dominate race of just Germans.
The only reason that the Nazis kept on having more and more Jews under their control was because in that time they were frequently conquering more territory and so they had even more room to keep the Jews in. It wasn’t that easy to conquer territory as you think. This assumption is because, for definite, the wartime situation made things much more difficult.
Also the wartime situation, for sure, made things completely different towards the Jews.
The holocaust progressed during the years 1939-45, leading to the treatment of Jews worsening!
3. In what ways did the Nazis try to eliminate all Jews in Europe in the years from 1941 onwards?
The Nazis used many methods to eliminate all the Jews in Europe from 1941 onwards. They used concentration camps, Ghettos, Death camps, Einsatzgruppen (murder squads) and the Final Solution. The Final Solution was the plan to annihilate all the Jews out of Europe. This was also known as the mass murder of the Jews (Genocide). The persecution of the Jews was applied in stages.
After the Nazi party achieved power, state enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, boycotts, "Aryanization," Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) programme, all of which was aimed towards the Jewish population, specifically to isolate them from the German society and to drive them out of the German area. After the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) began killing operations aimed entirely at the Jewish communities. Nowadays, in everyone’s point of view, this was really unfair to the Jews.
Basically the Germans were using slave labour from the Jews. The concentration and death camps were probably the most cruel one out of all of them.
Others were sent to gas chambers that first had carbon monoxide and then were changed to hydrogen cyanide, a better and more efficient way to kill off the Jews.
The people who were mainly killed were the elderly, disabled, mentally disabled and the children. If you were lucky enough and survived this terrible experience in the concentration camps, you were then surprisingly moved off to the Death Camps. Death camps were also used to kill the Jews if they already survived the Concentration Camps. They used Zyklon B pellets. This produced a deadly poisonous gas when it reacts with the oxygen in the air. But if there were too many Jews in the camp they were shot. But if there weren’t enough bullets, they will be burnt alive using a flamethrower.
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were squads of German SS and police. They were under the command of security police and security service (SD) officers. The Einsatzgruppen had a task to murder any racial or political enemies found behind the front lines in the occupied Soviet Union. These were people like Jews, (men, women, and children) Roma’s (Gypsies) and also officials of the Soviet State and Communist Party. The Einsatzgruppen also murdered thousands of people who lived in the homes designed specially for the mentally and physically disabled people.
During the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen followed the German army as it advanced deep into Soviet Territory. The Einsatzgruppen, often drawing on local support, carried out mass-murder operations.
In contrast to the process of deporting Jews from Ghettos to camps, Einsatzgruppen came directly to the home communities of the Jews and slaughtered them. The German army provided vital support to the Einsatzgruppen, including supplies, transportation and housing. At first the Einsatzgruppen shot mainly Jewish men. Soon, wherever the Einsatzgruppen went, they shot all Jewish men, women and children without thought for their age or sex.
They were all buried in a massive grave nearby. Near the end of July 1941, a troop of order police, under the command of higher SS and police leaders recently chosen for the occupied Soviet Union, engaged in systematic annihilation (the complete destruction) operations against larger Jewish communities.
The reason they had to quickly eliminate all the Jews from 1941, was because there was a quick change of policies happening which meant that they had to get rid of the Jews.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://
www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html
http://remember.org/abe/index.html
http://www.annefrank.eril.net/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi%20Germany.htm
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html
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ttp://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blholocaust.htm?once=true&
The Holocaust PowerPoint Presentation; by Mr. Knibbs
